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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25689547">her beauty and the moonlight</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euphorion/pseuds/Euphorion'>Euphorion</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Spider-Man (Comicverse)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Identity Porn, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Misunderstandings, Vague Mentions of Abuse, Voyeurism, outside pov</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 06:55:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,076</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25689547</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Euphorion/pseuds/Euphorion</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Flash opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He cleared his throat. “A few weeks ago,” he said, “um, right before I saw you last, actually. I heard something in the middle of the night, you know,” he waved a few fingers around his ears to vaguely indicate his combination of learned awarenesses, “can’t sleep through shit, and I looked outside. And I saw her. The Black Cat. With—” he took a breath. “With Spider-Man.”</i> </p><p>  <i>Peter was still watching him, an odd expression on his face. He didn’t look surprised, or concerned; he was just waiting, his brown eyes on Flash’s face.</i></p><p>  <i>Flash could feel his ears prick hot and knew he was blushing. “They were kissing.”</i></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Felicia Hardy/Peter Parker, Peter Parker/Flash Thompson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>112</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>PeterFelicia Week 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>her beauty and the moonlight</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for PeterFelicia week 2020! I combined the first theme, Midnight Rendezvous, with the Outside POV bonus theme. Title of course from Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Flash wasn’t sure, at first, what woke him. He’d always been a light sleeper, something in his chest still poised for the sound of a fist against flesh, for a child crying. Military training hadn’t helped; if anything, it just stretched that feeling in his chest up and out into his entire body, so that when he did wake up it was all at once, instantly alert, ready to react. </p><p>But there was nothing in his dark bedroom for him to react to. He ran his hands over his face—a dog barking in the street, maybe, a car backfiring, but usually those sounds would filter in through his dreams and he’d at least know. And then he heard it again—a shift, on the roof above him, a foot against slate, and suddenly his heart was thundering for new reasons entirely.</p><p>He pushed himself out of bed, crossing quietly to his window, just in time to see a lithe, black-clad figure swing away from his building to land in a crouch on the roof across the alley.</p><p>It wasn’t a wide alley, and the moon was high and full. Spider-Man’s suit had always been tight, but this new black version was nearly painted on, or maybe it was just that there were no criss-crossing patterns of webs to distract from the moon-lined curves of his muscle. Flash drifted closer, allowing himself, here and small and alone in the dark, to drink him in. He wasn’t facing Flash, staring instead out across the street behind Flash’s apartment. His thighs taut, his arms long and lean—Flash licked his lips, remembering those arms around him a half dozen times, swinging dizzyingly through the sky as Spider-Man pulled him away to safety—his profile indistinct but for the hint of a strong nose, a sharp jaw.</p><p>And then he straightened, moving like water, and another figure landed lightly on the roof next to him.</p><p>Flash recognized her—he would be hard pressed not to; her face (masked, as it was now) had been plastered over the <em> Daily Bugle </em>’s front page at least once a week for months. The Black Cat: the greatest jewel thief the world had ever seen. Flash watched Spider-Man say something to her, his mind buzzing—would they fight? Was she turning herself in? He had a moment to wonder whether he had time to dart downstairs and get his camera—he could give the pictures to Peter, let him sell them to the Bugle; Flash doubted he could match Peter’s usual artistic composition, but surely he’d make up for it with how close he was, and—</p><p>And then the Black Cat laughed, throwing her head back, her long white hair like an extension of the moonlight itself, and Spider-Man reached up to tangle his hands in it, pulling her in to kiss her.</p><p>Flash never saw either of them lift their hands to push up his mask, but it seemed to have melted away from the lower half of his face anyway, because their mouths definitely met, and suddenly that hint of jaw was much clearer, paler. He felt the floor drop out from under him, frozen, as the Black Cat ran her gloved hands over the muscles of Spider-Man’s back, tracing the same path Flash’s eyes had taken only moments before, then lower, pulling his gaze with them, to curl possessively around the curve of his ass.</p><p>Flash swallowed, unable to process what he was seeing. The Black Cat was a criminal—a thief; Spider-Man, despite what Jameson claimed, was a <em>hero, </em>he wouldn’t… He let the thought trail off, discarding it, because it wasn’t really what had his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides, and he knew it. It wasn’t <em>moral objection </em>that set his stomach swooping when the Black Cat stepped back, teasing, running her fingers down Spider-Man’s chest, and it wasn’t disillusionment that made him gasp, loud and ragged in the silence of the room, when Spider-Man grabbed both of her wrists in one hand and pushed her backwards, up against the wall of the roof entry to the building. Spider-Man was not and never had been synonymous with the <em>law</em>; if he had been, Flash could never have loved him this way, far too familiar with the uses and abuses of that law and those who carried them out. And the Black Cat’s crimes were almost never violent—she stole from the rich, from museums whose collections were stolen anyway, from other criminal elements. </p><p>No, what was surging through Flash’s body wasn’t betrayal but jealousy, and on its heels—his eyes caught on the darkness where their mouths met—a furious, thrumming <em> want. </em></p><p>He should go back to bed. He should ignore the half-hard weight of his dick against his thigh, shut his eyes, and think about anything other than Spider-Man stepping forward into the Black Cat’s space, running his hands down over her hips, tugging her hard against him. </p><p>But when he tried closing his eyes without moving, attempting to get himself under control, it was instantly worse—without visual confirmation of the Black Cat’s presence, it was so much easier to imagine Spider-Man pressing <em> him </em>back against the rough brick, so much easier to imagine that jaw against his skin, kissing his throat—he’d have stubble, maybe, brushing against Flash’s cheek as he—what? Told him he was beautiful, wanted? Loved?</p><p>Is that what he was telling her?</p><p>Flash let out a short, bitter laugh, his eyes opening again. On the rooftop Spider-Man’s clever, strong hands were rolling the Black Cat’s suit down her body, her skin emerging from shadow like he was peeling away the night itself. She was grinning up at him, saying something, her hair a waterfall, the two of them so perfectly composed of darkness and light that it stuck something sharp up under Flash’s ribs. One of Spider-Man’s gloved hands curled around the curve of the Black Cat’s hip; the other traced upward and did something to her breast that made her whole body jerk, and Flash clenched his jaw so hard it ached. He’d never touched this costume, but he knew the strange supple tightness of Spider-Man’s old gloves; would this be cooler? Smoother, running over her skin? Or would the heat of his skin come through, a contrast to the cool night air?</p><p>Transfixed, hating himself, he ran a hand down his stomach and into his sweatpants, wrapping a hand around himself, his mouth opening soundlessly in time with Spider-Man leaning in to kiss the Black Cat again. He ran his tongue over his lips, again and again, and then something in the interplay of shadow and light seemed off, and he realized, again without seeming to have to pause to take off his gloves, Spider-Man’s hands were bare. He thumbed over the Black Cat’s jaw, then slid two fingers into her mouth, and Flash’s hips stuttered, imagining that intrusion, imagining those callouses against his tongue. He was panting, now, hand slick, and he reached out to steady himself against the wall—and accidentally toppled his lamp, which fell over onto the ground with a loud crash, the bulb shattering.</p><p>It was, surely, too quiet to the sound to carry across the alley, but when he glanced back up, both figures on the rooftop were gone.</p><p>Shame coursed through him, and he dropped to a crouch below the window, shoving his clean hand into his hair with a groan. And then another sound—just on the other side of the wall, right behind his head—and he froze, pressing himself backward, making himself as small as possible as a shadow crossed his window. It was gone as quickly as it had come, but when Flash finally managed to get up the courage to peer upward at the darkness outside, he saw it had left something behind: a note, stuck to the glass with web.</p><p>Heart pounding, he pushed the window open and levered half his body out of it to read it—he knew from experience the webbing wouldn’t dissolve for a few hours. It said, in looping handwriting: </p><p>
  <em> Hope you enjoyed the show~ </em>
</p><p>It was signed with a little cartoon cat face, followed by a familiar spider.</p><p>In the morning—rubbing grit from his eyes—he gently lifted it off the remnants of the web, folded it up, and put it in the drawer in his nightstand.</p><p>+</p><p>It would have been fine if he could have left it at that. Stopped thinking about it, stopped imagining the pads of Spider-Man’s fingers against his mouth, against his hips, against his chest while he just tried to live his life. </p><p>The thing was, he reflected as he left his apartment a few days later, he was pretty sure Spider-Man didn’t know where he lived. Probably. He’d never actually brought Flash back to his apartment, just to his neighborhood, and anyway it had been ages since they’d crossed paths at all—probably Spider-Man hardly remembered his name, or just thought of him as that kid who started a fanclub for him once and gotten himself into trouble and needed rescuing like four other times. He rescued <em>everybody, </em>though, and if Flash had had some repeat performances in his life it was because of whatever was going on with Peter and Spider-Man, not. Anything else.</p><p>But the thing also was, he didn’t actually recall telling Spider-Man what neighborhood he lived in, and yet every time he was always set down on a rooftop or street-corner within walking distance, and—and if there was a chance, however slight, that Spider-Man <em> knew </em> it was him they’d caught spying on them—that he knew and maybe didn’t <em> mind— </em></p><p>He just. He had to know.</p><p>The question was <em> how. </em>Peter might know—Peter certainly always managed to know where Spider-Man would be better than anyone else, though he was extremely cagey as to his source of that information. Sometimes Flash wondered if he was being double-paid for the photos—Spider-Man paying him on commission, and then turning around and selling them to the Bugle, to show off his victories even if they were couched in Jameson’s insults. Not out of arrogance, but to make himself more a target for any up and coming villain who might otherwise hurt someone who couldn’t take it. It seemed like the kind of selfless thing Spider-Man would do.</p><p>But Peter was always broke, and even with his Aunt’s medical expenses, if he was double-paid for every Spider-Man spread he should have enough to have some cushion tucked away. </p><p>And anyway, how would Flash go about asking Peter if Spider-Man knew where he lived? What possible reason could he have for asking, other than <em> hey I saw my hero back a beautiful woman up against a wall the other night and it was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen and I want to know if he knows I was touching myself about it? </em> Flash would sooner die than say that to anyone, but the idea of saying it to <em> Peter </em>made him want to shrivel up and turn to dust.</p><p>He turned the corner, passing a newsstand, and froze mid-absent-wave to the guy selling gum and lotto tickets. The front page of the Bugle was a Rorschach inkblot of black and white, the Black Cat’s gorgeous, pointed face in the foreground, Spider-Man’s unmistakable silhouette in the back, standing atop a building watching her as she swung away from him. And. She was <em> winking </em>at the camera.</p><p>Flash bought the paper, making some kind of noncommittal sound to the guy when he tried to strike up a conversation, and made a beeline for the nearest bench—two blocks over, outside an ice cream shop with a loose understanding of seasons—the sign still read ‘open’ despite the chill in the early October air. </p><p><em> Criminal partnership, </em> the Bugle’s copy read, and Flash couldn’t help but hear it in Jameson’s blustering tone. <em> New heights of depravity from our homegrown menace, now wearing a black costume to match the darkness of his heart. </em>He snorted and skipped the rest, lingering over the pictures. It wasn’t the rooftop across the alley from him, but maybe it had been the same night—maybe Spider-Man had gotten an idea from his voyeurism and called Peter and—what? Peter had gone? In the middle of the night, to take pictures of Spider-Man and his, his lover, doing what? Just splitting up for the evening? Or had he arrived earlier, and seen more, was this exhibitionist streak Flash had half-convinced himself of real, had Peter—</p><p>A hand tapped his shoulder, and he spun—the wrong direction, because Peter was on the other side of him, laughing, a coffee in one hand, his warm brown eyes tired but a joy in him that Flash hadn’t seen in a while. </p><p><em> Maybe since Mary Jane left, </em>he thought, and then, said, belatedly, “Hi,” instead of continuing to stare.</p><p>“Hi,” said Peter, vaulting easily over the back of the bench to sit at his side. “Fancy meeting you here.” He glanced at the paper in Flash’s lap. “Oh, hey, someone’s stealing my gig.” </p><p>Flash blinked at him. “We live on the same block,” he said, and then, “wait, you didn’t take these?”</p><p>Peter snagged the paper off his lap, his other hand lifting his coffee to his lips. He moved like no one else in the world, like all the parts of his body were distinct entities from one another but still perfectly under his control. Flash remembered when they were kids he’d been hilariously bad at the trick where you had to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time, but sometime in the years between, some switch had flipped. Flash had an absurd urge to ask him to do it now, just so he could see the absent perfection of the motion. </p><p>“Nah,” he said, and Flash had to take a moment to remember what he’d asked. “You insult me. Look at this composition! And Spidey’s so blurry in the back! I mean, I don’t blame the photographer, who’d focus on him when the Cat’s right there, but.” He shrugged. “Honestly, if you ask me, she took these herself.”</p><p>The tension in Flash’s chest eased. “Oh,” he said. “Really?”</p><p>Peter nodded, flipping the paper over to indicate another picture, Spider-Man and the Black Cat standing in the moonlight. They were close, but not nearly as close as they’d been across the street from Flash’s place, even when he’d thought Spider-Man was just going to arrest her. They weren’t touching, just looking at each other, their postures a little unnatural. “They look staged,” Peter said, as Flash came to the same conclusion. “I’ll have to ask Jonah where he got these, though I doubt he’ll tell me. Mysteriously shoved under his door, probably. Or he found ‘em under his plate at breakfast.” At Flash’s questioning look, he grinned. “She’s the best cat burglar in the world, you know.”</p><p>“Right,” said Flash, trying to keep up. “But—why? What do they get out of being seen like this?”</p><p>Peter shrugged. “Maybe it’s what she gets out of it,” he said. “Maybe he didn’t even know she took them.” He didn’t sound too bothered at the prospect, his voice light.</p><p>“You look good,” Flash said, because he did. “Happy, I mean.” </p><p>Peter tossed the <em> Bugle </em> back into his lap. “Too happy for someone whose job is maybe being stolen out from under him by a glamorous vixen, you mean?” He tucked the edge of the paper coffee cup between his teeth and stretched both arms out long across the back of the bench, fingertips tapping against the wood on Flash’s other side. “Maybe I am,” he said, muffled, the cup wobbling, before he took it out of his mouth with the hand not currently driving Flash to distraction. “I met a girl.”</p><p>Flash nodded. He’d guessed as much; love was the only thing that ever seemed to pull Peter far enough up out of his myriad responsibilities and worries that he let himself see the sun. “Anyone I know?”</p><p>Peter’s eyes crinkled up at the corners, and there was just a beat too long before he shook his head. “She’s—different. A little wild, she definitely keeps me on my toes, but.” He squinted up at the sky, and Flash saw a small, mouth-shaped shadow under his jaw, darker than the stubble surrounding it. Incongruously, he remembered the shift of Spidey’s jaw in the moonlight, and tore his eyes away. “I think she really gets a part of me that no one ever has.”</p><p>Flash hooked his foot around his own ankle, feeling small. “She sounds like a real bombshell,” he said. “You should bring her around sometime. We can—” He stopped. What? Have a drink? He didn’t drink, and neither did Peter. Watch a movie? He can count on one hand the number of times he’d managed to get Peter to sit through a whole film with him without remembering something he needed to do, or being called away, or falling asleep.</p><p>They used to go out dancing, when Mary Jane was here. Mary Jane, and Gwen.</p><p>“Yeah,” said Peter, even though he hadn’t finished his sentence. “We can.” He smiled at Flash, sideways, and then stood up, his palm smoothing over the line of Flash’s shoulders. He nodded down at the <em> Bugle </em>. “You know,” he said, “I think you’re right.”</p><p>Flash blinked at him. “What?”</p><p>“Whatever the Black Cat’s doing, submitting those pics,” Peter said, “I think it’s for both of them. I think they probably make a good team.”</p><p>He left, tossing his empty coffee cup into a trash can halfway down the block with a basketball form he’d certainly never displayed in gym class, and Flash ran his hands over his face. “You have no idea,” he muttered.</p><p>Because the last thing he couldn’t stop thinking about, when he wasn’t so fully in his own selfish needs, when he wasn’t pretending it was him being pressed into and peeled out of shadow on a moonlit rooftop, was the Black Cat’s face. Her laughter, with Spider-Man’s hands on her. The joy in the line of his body. </p><p>He stood up, tucking the <em> Bugle </em> into his coat pocket, and walked home alone.</p><p>+</p><p>He maybe got a little obsessive about the Black Cat. </p><p>It wasn’t to the point of his teenage—whatever, with Spider-Man; he wasn’t fifteen anymore and not nearly so desperate to believe that there were true, genuine heroes in the world (he knew there were, now). And there was none of the world-shaking confusion that he now understood as his first real crush. He was just—intrigued. He’d never seen Spider-Man with a woman before, not like this—<em> certainly </em>not like this, but. Not at all, not romantically. </p><p>He hadn’t even really been sure…</p><p>He squashed the thought, because it wasn’t true. There was a difference between not being sure of something and wishing it weren’t true. He’d known Spider-Man wasn’t like him; of course he had. He was a hero, and more, he’d always been, to Flash, the ideal man: not what a man <em> should </em> be, the way his father would always rant about, but what a man <em> could </em>be. Unwavering in his convictions, despite what the world threw at him. Unrelenting in his pursuit of justice. Strong, impossibly strong, and always, in all things, concerned about those who had less strength than he did.</p><p>Flash had wanted so many things when Spider-Man debuted into his life. He still wanted so many things. But alongside the admiration and the desire there was a thin, fruitless, but unbreakable thread of envy. Because Flash <em> wasn’t </em>like him, couldn’t be like him. Because no matter how hard he tried, how many times he turned the scene around in his head, it was never him pressing the Black Cat back against the brick. It was never him peeling her from her costume, never him who she looked up at, gorgeous and laughing in the moonlight, never her wrists in his hands.</p><p>So he clipped out every news story he could find from old issues of the Bugle and kept them in the drawer with the note they’d left him. He went to the library and traced back older reports of her exploits, not just in New York but around the world. It was surprisingly easy to unearth her real name; he hadn’t even meant to, caring less about her civilian identity than her personality, her dreams, what she cared about. Because if he couldn’t be Spider-Man, and he couldn’t be what Spider-Man wanted, he could at least get to know the woman who was.</p><p>He learned she’d broken her father out of prison so he could die in his own house, with her. He learned she’d stolen $108 million dollars worth of diamonds in a single day, that she was widely believed to have anonymously donated half of that money to a domestic violence shelter in Queens, and that despite her identity being an open secret she’d never actually been charged for anything—her calling card as the Black Cat was clear, but there was never anything actually tying her civilian ID to the crime. </p><p>So when he ran into Felicia Hardy in the bodega on the corner of his block, sunglasses perched on top of her head, a stack of two foil-wrapped breakfast sandwiches in one many-ringed hand and a large iced coffee in the other, he nearly dropped his orange juice.</p><p>She was as gorgeous up close as she had been in moonlight, if a little more human—she looked tired, and happy, and her dark roots were just beginning to show at the part in her silver hair, and Flash could absolutely not reconcile the fact that she was here.</p><p>“Sorry,” she said, shifting past him to leave.</p><p>He turned, his mouth opening. “Hey, uh. Wait.”</p><p>She paused, giving him a look over her shoulder. “Look, I’m flattered, but one of these bagels is for my boyfriend, so—”</p><p>He shook his head, feeling his cheeks flush. “That’s not—” What could he even say? <em> I like your style? I admire what you do, with the stealing, and the costume, and stuff? I’ve been pretending to be you in my deepest fantasies for three straight weeks? </em>“Nevermind, I, uh. Thought you were someone else.”</p><p>“Sure,” said Felicia Hardy, and slipped out into the morning.</p><p>Flash paid for his orange juice, worrying his lip as he waited for a receipt he definitely didn’t need, and then followed, just in time to see Felicia jog up the stairs, across the street and halfway up the block.</p><p>Into Peter’s apartment building.</p><p>Flash stopped dead in the doorway of the bodega, his mind racing. Other people lived in that building—not <em> many, </em>granted, and the only others he’d ever seen or met were the old Hispanic couple on the floor above Peter who sometimes asked him to watch their cat, and Candi, Randi, and Bambi on the floor below, and—and the landlord, who was about seventy-nine and always smelled like cigars and who was really into experimental film. But. That didn’t mean there weren’t others, maybe a new neighbor, a handsome young man or maybe a sexy older guy, someone sophisticated and international and more likely to draw the Black Cat’s attention.</p><p>Someone sophisticated and international who had decided to live in a shitty walk-up in Forrest Hills. Next door to Peter Parker, who had always effortlessly snared the attention of the most beautiful women Flash had ever met, who had a new girlfriend, someone who was <em> wild </em> and <em> different </em> and <em> kept him on his toes. </em></p><p>“Excuse me,” said a little old lady, pointedly, and he stumbled out of her way with an apologetic smile.</p><p>Fuck.</p><p>He went home and drank too much of his new orange juice, realized he’d neglected to get any of the other groceries he needed, and gave up, lying down on the couch on his back.</p><p>Maybe the Black Cat and Spider-Man had just had a one-night thing. Maybe Felicia and Peter weren’t exclusive. Maybe—</p><p>Maybe Peter’s new girlfriend was cheating on him with Spider-Man, and Flash was the only one who knew. </p><p>He rolled off the couch and picked up the phone.</p><p>+</p><p>Peter met him at the coffee shop, because Flash had to eat something or he’d burst apart at the seams with nervous energy. The scone he’d bought was turning to dust in his mouth anyway, made worse by the easy grin Peter cast over his shoulder as he entered. If he’d looked good the other day he looked even better now, and Flash’s entire stomach was in a horrible writhing knot knowing he was about to bring that happiness crashing down. </p><p>Half of Peter’s grin was still on his face when he met Flash’s eyes, but his gaze immediately turned concerned as soon as he read—whatever Flash’s face was doing. He slid into the chair across from him. “Hey,” he said cautiously. “What’s—”</p><p>“Your girlfriend,” said Flash, without preamble, because it was the only way this conversation was going to happen at all. “She’s Felicia Hardy, right?”</p><p>Peter’s eyebrows drew together. “Flash—”</p><p>“And,” said Flash, lowering his voice, “Felicia Hardy is the Black Cat, right?” Peter had to know, even if Felicia was keeping that a secret, too; if <em> Flash </em>had figured it out, Peter definitely had.</p><p>Peter straightened up. “Look, if this about her being a thief, we’ve talked a lot about it and—”</p><p>“It’s not,” said Flash. “I don’t care about that.”</p><p>Peter cocked his head, studying him. “Then what is this?”</p><p>Flash opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He cleared his throat. “A few weeks ago,” he said, “um, right before I saw you last, actually. I heard something in the middle of the night, you know,” he waved a few fingers around his ears to vaguely indicate his combination of learned awarenesses, “can’t sleep through shit, and I looked outside. And I saw her. The Black Cat. With—” he took a breath. “With Spider-Man.”</p><p>Peter was still watching him, an odd expression on his face. He didn’t look surprised, or concerned; he was just waiting, his brown eyes on Flash’s face.</p><p>Flash could feel his ears prick hot and knew he was blushing. “They were kissing.”</p><p>He wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t for Peter to let out a soft laugh and lean back in his chair. “Kissing.”</p><p>“It’s true,” Flash insisted, bewildered. “Pete—I wouldn’t lie to you about this—”</p><p>“I know,” said Peter, sitting forward again, reaching out to squeeze Flash’s shoulder. “Hey, I know. It’s just. You’re sure? You didn’t just see them standing close together, maybe talking?”</p><p>Flash took a breath. “Very sure,” he said, swallowing down a little bubble of hysteria. “It—it happened for a long time.” <em> Please don’t ask me what else they did. </em></p><p>Peter’s mouth twitched, just for an instant, before he schooled it back to something more solemn. “Right,” he said, “and you watched them? Kissing? For a long time?”</p><p>Flash felt like he’d walked into someone else’s conversation, his whole careful plan derailed by the absolute lack of reaction to what should have been devastating news. “Peter—”</p><p>Peter held up his hands. “You’re right, you’re right. Absolutely not the point.” He dropped his head with a sigh, running his hands through his hair, and Flash thought for a moment it might finally be sinking in, and then he muttered, “well, I guess it was only a matter of time.”</p><p>Flash blinked. “What?”</p><p>Peter stood up. “Flash,” he said. “Thank you. Really.” He smiled, and it was genuine, though there was an odd emotion in it, one Flash couldn’t quite name. “You’re a good friend.”</p><p>“Oh,” said Flash, his face and ears getting even hotter. “I—”</p><p>“I trust you,” said Peter. “Okay? I want you to remember that. This is me trusting you.” </p><p>“Okay,” said Flash, a little stunned. “I, um, I trust you too.”</p><p>Peter smiled at him again, and then reached out, his fingertips tugging, once, on Flash’s earlobe. “Keep your ears out tonight,” he said, mysteriously, and then he left.</p><p>Flash stared after him, more confused than he’d ever been in his life.</p><p>+</p><p>He couldn’t sleep at all that night. He barely tried, pacing his apartment instead, primed for any sound on his roof or the one opposite. He turned off his light (with its new lightbulb) and then turned it back on, not even sure what he was waiting for, unable to shake that phantom tug at his earlobe.</p><p>Twice he crossed to his window, thinking he saw shadows move on the roof beyond; twice he returned to lie despondently on his bed and not think about anything as hard as he could.</p><p>He felt like he had every piece of a jigsaw puzzle, painstakingly pieced together through long hours in the library and aching, desperate nights and caring too much about the way Peter looked at him, but he couldn’t figure out what picture it was making without placing the final piece.</p><p>He just wished whoever, whatever it was would show up and hand it to him already.</p><p>At nearly one a.m, just as he’d convinced himself there was no secret messenger and closed his eyes against the night, there was a soft rap at his window.</p><p>He sprang up and crossed to it. Once again, there was no one there. But across the alley, on the rooftop, a piece of shadow separated itself from the rest—the Black Cat, stalking forward, and then, following her, Spider-Man. Their hands were linked, fingers tangled together, as Felicia drew him forward and into her arms.</p><p>Flash stared at them, his heart in his throat. What—what was this?</p><p>There was something different about the way they touched, this time—something almost like a dance, slow and tender but less wrapped up in each other, like they were aware of his gaze, like they were showing off. He watched them kiss, Spider-Man’s mask again melting away from his mouth, Felicia’s hands trailing up and down the perfect curve of his spine.</p><p>And then Spider-Man turned, their foreheads still touching, until he was facing Flash’s window, and the mask slipped away from his face entirely.</p><p>Peter Parker met Flash Thompson’s eyes, and smiled.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>sorry about how flash-heavy this one is!! I just have a lot of feelings about flash!! i promise the rest will be entirely focused on our king and queen of the new york night</p></blockquote></div></div>
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